“King didn’t want to change people, he wanted a better society,” said Morehouse sophomore Rami Blair, who went on to quote King’s own words: “The law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.”

Yet the core of the Jan. 20 debate was not so much whether King’s dream was unattainable, but what the dream was to begin with. The teams sparred over the definition of the dream and what King meant when he wished that his children “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

The Morehouse debaters pointed out that King was, in Blair’s words, a “practical optimist,” not the radical idealist many perceive him to be. The dream was to create equality of opportunity under the law — not a color-blind utopia.

Bates’ Brooks Quimby Debate Council team supported the motion, arguing that the oppression within U.S. education, economic and criminal justice systems makes true equality impossible.

Benjamin Elijah Mays ’20.

Represented by Stephanie Wesson ’14 of Mount Vernon, N.H., and Shannon Griffin ’16 of Philadelphia, the Bates team maintained that the dream was an idealized vision of a U.S. in which race no longer matters.

The annual tradition of the Reverend Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate honors the man who is at the center of the historic friendship between Bates and Morehouse.

Former captain of Bates’ debate team, Mays ’20 became the president of Atlanta’s historically black Morehouse College in 1940. He was a national figure in the civil rights movement as a theorist and as spiritual adviser and friend to King, who graduated from Morehouse in 1948.

Jan Hovden, Bates professor of rhetoric and director of debate, explained that the day’s motion was intentionally provocative in order to illustrate the power of “the spoken word above that of violent revolution.”

Here’s a detailed schedule of events for the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at Bates College. All these events are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6400.

Sunday, Jan. 16

The annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Memorial Service of Worship takes place at 7 p.m. Sunday in the Bates College Chapel, 275 College St. The Rev. James Lawson, a definitive figure in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, offers the sermon. Also featured is music by two student ensembles, the Gospelaires and the a cappella Crosstones, as well as a liturgical dance by the troupe Justified. To learn more, please call 207-786-8272.

Monday, Jan. 17

At 9:30 a.m., Lawson presents the first keynote address of the college’s MLK Day events in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. His topic: the continued importance of direct action and social justice in the 21st century.

In the first of two breakout sessions in Pettengill Hall (rooms TBA; 4 Andrews Road), starting at 11 a.m., members of the campus community discuss ideas presented in Lawson’s keynote address and plan for future activism.

Members of the debate teams from Morehouse and Bates colleges, joined by local high school debaters, address the resolution that “Violence is a justified response to political oppression” in a debate at 1 p.m. in the Benjamin Mays Center, 95 Russell St.

For the second keynote address, Asher Kolieboi, LGBTQ community coordinator in the Multicultural Resource Center at Oberlin College, examines challenges for social activists in 21st-century American culture. He speaks at 2:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall.

Exploration of the day’s theme concludes with a plenary discussion with Lawson and Kolieboi at 4:30 p.m. in Pettengill Hall (room TBA).

Bates students present the performance Sankofa, a celebration of the African diasporic experience through theater, music, dance and spoken word, at 7:30 p.m. in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

Tuesday, Jan. 18

Vinie Burrows, the renowned actress, storyteller and social justice activist, offers a Noonday Concert Series performance in conjunction with the King Day observances at 12:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Thursday, Jan. 20

Vinie Burrows (see previous item) returns to perform her acclaimed solo show Walk Together Children, a chronicle of the African American experience, at 7 p.m. in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St. A question-and-answer session follows. Though this event is open to the public at no cost, tickets are required. For tickets and more information, please call 207-786-6161.

One of them described by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “the greatest teacher of nonviolence in America,” leaders representing two generations of social activism offer keynote addresses during the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at Bates College on Monday, Jan. 17.

The college’s theme for its 2011 King Day programming is Get Up, Stand Up: The Fierce Urgency of Now. The speakers are the Rev. James Lawson, a definitive figure in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, and Asher Kolieboi, co-director of an organization that works against campus violence toward members of the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community.

All MLK Day events at Bates are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6400.

See a schedule of King Day events at Bates.“Our theme sets the title of a famous Bob Marley reggae song alongside a key phrase from Dr. King’s speech during the 1963 March on Washington,” explains MLK Committee co-chair Dale Chapman, assistant professor of music.

“We hope to emphasize how the urgency of our current local, national and global problems can be met only with an equally urgent call for debate and dialogue.”

Student members of the MLK Day Committee discuss this year’s theme and structure of the day.

Lawson speaks twice at Bates. He offers the sermon for the college’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Memorial Service of Worship at 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 16, in the Bates College Chapel, 275 College St. To learn more about this service, please call 207-786-8272.

At 9:30 a.m. the following day, he presents the first keynote address of the college’s MLK Day events in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. His topic: the continued importance of direct action and social justice in the 21st century.

Kolieboi provides the second Jan. 17 keynote at 2:30 p.m., also in the Olin auditorium. He’ll discuss challenges for social activists in contemporary American culture. Following each address, breakout sessions will afford an opportunity to discuss the speakers’ ideas and to consider future activism. These sessions, and a plenary session featuring Lawson and Kolieboi at 4:30 p.m., take place in Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

The day also includes a student debate at 1 p.m. and a 7:30 p.m. performance by students.

The speakers

A college with a commitment to equality and social justice rooted in its very founding by abolitionists prior to the Civil War, Bates has long been distinctive in its observances of the King holiday. Regular classes are canceled and the entire campus turns its attention to issues around civil rights, social justice and King’s legacy.

This year, for the first time, Bates presents two keynote speakers instead of one and streamlines its programming to focus on those speakers’ ideas.

“James and Asher will lead us in a daylong sustained dialogue about how Bates, as stated in the college’s mission statement, might more fully engage in ‘responsible stewardship of the wider world,’ ” explains the Rev. Bill Blaine Wallace, the college’s multifaith chaplain and a member of the MLK Day Committee.

“James Lawson’s commitment to the philosophy and practice of nonviolence has not wavered over the course of 60 years,” he continues.

“And the principles and tactics of nonviolence, which he has taught tirelessly from the earliest days of the civil rights movement, have inspired the work and shaped the vision of Asher Kolieboi, co-director of the Equality Ride,” whose members deliver messages of acceptance and inclusion to colleges.

A Methodist preacher since his teens and a pacifist jailed for refusing military service during the Korean War, Lawson brought Gandhian principles of passive resistance to the civil rights movement in the 1950s. As a student at Vanderbilt University — from which he was expelled because of his activism, and to which he returned as a Distinguished University Professor — he trained the next generation of civil rights leaders, among them Diane Nash and John Lewis.

Kolieboi, named one of the “40 Under 40” outstanding figures in the gay community by the magazine The Advocate, is also LGBT community coordinator at the Multicultural Resource Center at Oberlin College.

Lawson speaks twice at Bates. He offers the sermon for the college’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Memorial Service of Worship at 7 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 16, in the Bates College Chapel, 275 College St. To learn more about this service, please call 207-786-8272.

People like to believe that positive change just happens, Academy Award-winning actress Geena Davis told the Bates College Class of 2009 during its Commencement ceremony May 31.

But with so many aspects of our society, Davis said, “change must be firmly and continuously pushed in order to be effected.”

The actress was one of five figures prominent in their fields to receive honorary degrees in a morning ceremony on May 31. Joining Davis in addressing the 472 graduates and their families were the Rev. Robert M. Franklin Jr., president of Morehouse College; biomechanics researcher Mimi A.R. Koehl; Maine philanthropist and 1951 Bates graduate Ralph T. Perry; and columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria.

There was a celebrity of sorts among the graduates, too. Fifty-five years after leaving Bates to join the army, Carl Harris of Salem, Mass., was among the graduates receiving a Bates diploma. Harris, 75, returned to Bates to complete his degree and is the second-oldest person (after an 83-year-old graduate in 1931) to earn a bachelor’s degree from Bates.

Reflecting the nation’s new political reality, the theme of change amidst trying times dominated the advice offered graduates during the two-hour ceremony on Bates’ Historic Quad.

In her opening, Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen recalled the historical context distinctive to the Class of 2009. While its members were arriving at Bates amidst “sunshine and beginnings,” the Gulf Coast was reeling under the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina. Four years later, the class began its senior year just as the subprime mortgage crisis touched off our current economic woes.

“Bates people neither ignore nor dwell on the worst. They ask what they can do to make things better. You will confront difficulties by rising to the occasion and being the very best that you can be,” Hansen said.

Geena Davis, joking at the top of her speech that “hereafter, I’d like to be referred to as Dr. Davis,” deftly wove humor and a call to action together in her talk. She described the work she is doing, through the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, to research the disparities between Hollywood’s depictions of women and of men, especially in programming for children.

Looking more broadly at gender inequality in America, Davis noted that only 16 percent of the members of Congress are women, and if women supplant men at the current rate, it will take 500 years to even things up.

A Maine businessman whose success engendered a remarkable record of philanthropy, of which Bates has been a major beneficiary, Ralph Perry asked the graduates to consider the very notion of success.

Too often, he said, our society takes wealth, accolades and occupation as measures of success — but, he asked, “when we are near the end of life’s journey, will the greatest satisfaction be from the accumulation of wealth and honors, or will it be the memories of our good deeds?”

Perry, a retired president of Maine-based Progressive Distributors and senior vice president of Hannaford Bros. supermarkets, went on to offer some of his own measures of personal success — self-knowledge, habitually treating

others with dignity and respect, having high expectations of oneself and others.

As for the rewards of philanthropy, Perry concluded by sharing excerpts from letters he had received. One came from a student attending Bates on a scholarship he endowed — a scholarship, she wrote, that has “launched [her] into a career at a college I have fallen in love with.”

Franklin prefaced his talk by reaffirming the long, strong relationship between Bates and Morehouse. He said, “Morehouse thanks Bates for our greatest president, and Bates alumnus, Benjamin Elijah Mays,” a member of the Bates Class of 1920 who drew to Morehouse students of the caliber of Martin Luther King Jr.

In essence, Franklin called his advice to the graduates “become, beware and be.”

“Become renaissance women and renaissance men, with social conscience and global perspective,” he urged. In a reference to Mahatma Gandhi, he told the graduates to beware of the deadly sins of modern life, such as commerce without morality and pleasure without conscience.

Finally, citing civil rights leader King, he told the graduates to be “transformed non-conformists” — the people who turn their differences with society into a different, and better, society.

Looking back at her own undergraduate conversion experience from an art to a science major, Koehl implored her

listeners not to fear crossing boundaries, in learning and in life. “Problems facing the world today are so complicated that it’s going to take people who can talk across boundaries and work across boundaries to solve them,” she said.

“You’ve learned how to learn here,” she said. “And my challenge to you today is: At the end of every day as you go forward from here, ask yourself, What did I learn today? And if you didn’t perceive enough to learn anything new, then live tomorrow differently.”

Zakaria told the graduates that “you are the change you seek. You are the agents of change in this world.” Pointing to the effective global response to the H1N1 virus, he reminded the gathering that while challenges are easy to predict, it’s much harder to predict “how the collective human response will change history.”

Zakaria was reluctant to suggest career fields to the graduates, he said. But, echoing Perry, “it is likely that human beings will be rewarded for the same qualities that have been rewarded for the past 5,000 years: intelligence, hard work, honesty, a sense of character, loyalty to your family and friends, love and faith,” he said. “Perhaps above all, love and faith.”

Drawing what appeared to be a substantially larger crowd than past years, the ceremony filled the leafy Historic Quad. As the occasional clouds gave way to brilliant sun, bursts of maple seeds glittered down onto the gathering like confetti.

Of the 472 seniors that Bates graduated Sunday, 253 are women and 219 are men. Fifty-five graduates come from

Maine and 26 members of the class come from other countries.

Political science was the most popular major for members of the class of 2009, with 63 graduates. Second place went to psychology, with 57, followed by economics with 56. Thirty-five women and 21 men took double majors, with French and Spanish (tied for first place), economics and history being the most popular second majors.

Seventy-three members of the class of 2009 earned bachelor of science degrees, with the remaining 399 earning bachelor of arts degrees.

— Doug Hubley, Office of Communications and Media Relations

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2009/05/31/geena-davis/feed/0Staying at Morehouse yet will miss Bateshttp://www.bates.edu/news/2009/02/10/morehouse/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2009/02/10/morehouse/#respondTue, 10 Feb 2009 17:58:04 +0000http://batesviews.net/?p=2751From Anthony: I decided to extend my studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Last semester I began to develop great relationships with students and increase my involvement with organizations at Morehouse. Therefore, I thought it would be best to stay another semester. Also, I had this feeling that Morehouse would continue to help me develop a heightened social conscious as well as excellent personal development skills. I also happen to love it here too.

I must admit, I will miss many aspects of Bates while away.

Top 5

5) International Dinner: A time when international students prepare meals for the entire campus community from their homeland. The food is delicious and learning about food from different cultures can be intellectually stimulating and of course nourishing!

4) Amandla!: The Black student organization typically conducts an annual symposium on a particular issue concerning people of African Descent.

3) The Society of African American Studies: This organization is a developing organization at Bates. I serve as the moderator and upon my return to Bates in the fall 2009, I plan to work with other students to initiate a campus newsletter that provide a forum for student of African Americans Studies to publish their work and the newsletter will promote events and achievements from faculty and students within the African American Studies program.

2) People: The warm hospitality of faculty, administrators and staff at Bates who are always willing to make sure you are most comfortable academically and personally

1) MLK DAY: My most favorite time at Bates. Honestly it is.This is when the entire campus community is invited to come out to participate in workshops, forums and performances celebrating the life of Dr. King.

Standing in awe over the news that Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America with students and President Robert M. Franklin of Morehouse College

From Anthony: Tuesday November 4th, 2008 will be a day I will never forget. That day I got up early to head over to Morehouse College’s Archer Hall to vote for the next President of the United States of America.

I stood in line for three hours. I was nervous. This was the first time I have ever voted and I had prayed that the person I had decided to vote for would win. I couldn’t believe that I casted my ballot for an African American candidate for president. I voted for Barack Obama, a Black man and a person I believe could lead our country in the right moral and social path for at least the next 4 yrs. Never in my lifetime could I have imagined a Black person having a legitimate chance of becoming President of the United States of America.

Later that evening, I gathered with students from around the Atlanta University Center to observe the 2008 presidential election results. There were watch parties at Clark Atlanta, Spelman and Morehouse. However, I viewed the election results with students from Morehouse in Fredrick Douglass Hall. Upon hearing the results that Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States of America, myself and many other students at Morehouse moved into tears of joy, immense excitement, and pride. Each Black student stood in disbelief coupled with a personal story on how much this election meant to them. Students at Morehouse began to sing “Give me that OoooBAMA spirit” a remix version of one of Morehouse’s college hymms, “Ol Morehouse Spirit.” For this historical evening, I could have never dreamed a day when a Black man could receive so much support from so many races and earn the position of highest office in our country. This is truly amazing. I couldnt have asked for a better setting to have witness the results of the presidential election than Morehouse. I celebrated this election with socially conscious African American brothers who like me personally understood the deep meaning behind this election for people of African descent. Later into the evening, hundreds of emotional students filed the campus singing, dancing, praying, yelling, calling their parents/grandparents, and chatting on what this period in history meant to them. Sounds of the night included “I cant believe our President is Black”… “I love this country”… “Thank YOU LORD”…”He WON”…”WE WON”.

For me, this moment in history, proved to be the first time in my life that I had ever been so proud to be an American. As the President of Morehouse College, Dr. Robert Franklin, “Black people did not make this victory happen alone.” He reminded us that there was a collective effort among everyone from all racial, religious, social and economic backgrounds that made Obama’s victory possible. The implications of this election for Black males means that our nation will now have a national public symbol of a Black male who defies all stereotypes that have been traditionally linked to us. Moreover, with Obama’s victory I began to see the true possibilities for America. I have always believed in the possibilities for America’s advancement, yet I can now confirm that here in America anything can happen.

As part of her pschology course, Lisa D'Oyen works at an HIV/AIDS awareness table in the college center at Spelman College, the historically black women's college in Atlanta.

Lisa D’Oyen ’09 of Kingston, Jamaica, holds her cell phone in one hand and two open boxes of Hostess crème-filled chocolate Zingers in the other. Standing beside a table lined with edible snacks, lubricated latex condoms, and fact cards, D’Oyen and her psychology classmates share information about HIV/AIDS with students heading to lunch. Their sound system broadcasts hip-hop as a Yale Divinity School recruiter also vies for student attention.

A standard Chase Hall tableau? Not today. This afternoon, D’Oyen stakes her ground in Manley College Center at Spelman College, the historically black women’s college in Atlanta, where she and Mbali Ndlovu ’09 of New York City are spending their fall semester.

Like any of the College’s myriad off-campus study offerings, the exchange program with Spelman and Morehouse hopes to offer students the right experience at the right time: during their junior year, when students are equipped to dig deeper into their intellectual, social, and emotional beings.

For D’Oyen and Ndlovu, part of this exploration will involve race, for at Spelman and Morehouse, the nation’s two premier historically black liberal arts colleges, “the courses and the context provide a sensitivity and awareness of racial issues that,” says Steve Sawyer, associate dean of students and director of off-campus study, “is impossible to replicate on a small New England campus — no matter how well-intentioned.”

Another overlay is gender. Spelman wants visiting students like D’Oyen and Ndlovu to leave the school with a “stronger sense of self, their place in the world, and what the Spelman ‘sisterhood’ is all about,” says Desiree Pedescleaux, who oversees the institution’s domestic exchange programs.

Ndlovu and D’Oyen get a sense of the sisterhood from “The Black Female Body in American Culture,” taught by M. Bahati Kuumba, associate professor of women’s studies. The professor discusses how the human body is a system of symbols and how, for black women in U.S. society, those symbols can suggest a political struggle.

After class, Ndlovu schedules an appointment with Kuumba, wanting the professor’s advice on designing a senior thesis topic for her Bates majors in African American and women and gender studies.

Everything about the professor resonates with the two young women. “She’s an activist. She’s been out there. And she’s very political,” D’Oyen says. True, there are political activists on the Bates faculty, she says, but at Spelman “we get the black perspective from black women. We can relate.”

“Like for the first time in my college career,” Ndlovu adds.

Mbali Ndlovu ’09 (left) and Lisa D’Oyen ’09, who studied at Spelman College during the fall, join Claudeny Obas ’09, who spent spring 2006 at Morehouse College, at the Benjamin E. Mays National Memorial at Morehouse. Mays graduated from Bates in 1920.

One morning in late November, D’Oyen and Ndlovu head across the street to Morehouse to see the Benjamin E. Mays National Memorial. At once, the Bates-Morehouse connection seems real, though they’d heard about it all fall. “Every Morehouse student we met automatically knew what Bates was,” Ndlovu says.

At the monument, the women are joined by Claudeny Obas ’09 of New York City, who’s in Atlanta visiting friends he made while studying at Morehouse in 2006.

Obas, a veteran of mostly white educational environments, talks about what might be gained from a semester at Morehouse, particularly by someone who’s never been in a minority situation — racial, sexual, religious, or other: “an understanding of what it’s like not having as many people to lean on in terms of your peers, and [having to go] outside of your comfort zone just to make the effort to reach people.”

For Obas, the semester started with getting “stuck in a room for two hours learning the school song,” he recalls, but the indoctrination into the Morehouse mystique paid off. “I felt I was joining a long line of prestige,” he says. Obas’ semester at Morehouse deepened his understanding that he “works better” in the multifaceted social milieu of an urban college. “I’ve always known that, but it was made much more apparent to me at Morehouse.”

He experienced one particularly glittering facet of Morehouse life thanks to Roland Davis ’92, assistant dean of students at Bates.

Bates, Morehouse, Spelman

The connection between Bates and the nation’s two premier historically black liberal arts colleges — Morehouse for men and Spelman for women — dates to 1940, the year Benjamin E. Mays ’20 began his 27-year Morehouse presidency.

The Bates-Morehouse-Spelman Exchange Program was established in 1994, the centennial year of Mays’ birth. While the program has had modest student participation from both sides over the years, Bates is now focusing greater attention on this and similar initiatives, part of redoubled efforts to incorporate a wider spectrum of people, perspectives, and disciplines within the Bates experience.

Davis, whose father chairs the Morehouse board of trustees, said that if Obas was accepted for the Morehouse semester, Davis would get him tickets to the school’s “Candle in the Dark” gala.

And that February, Obas was indeed in black tie at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta to see famed photographer Gordon Parks and Tony Award–winner Geoffrey Holder receive their Candle awards for excellence in their fields. Obas also witnessed several Morehouse alums receive their “Bennie” awards for service, achievement, and trailblazing.

Robert Franklin, Morehouse College's 10th president, accepts congratulations from a group of Bates College Mays Men and Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill, special assistant to President Elaine Tuttle Hansen, at his inauguration in Atlanta (Photograph by Philip McCollum). Below right: a Mays Men badge created especially for the visit. Below left: The Mays Men pose beneath an oil portrait of Benjamin Elijah Mays '20 (center) on the Morehouse campus.

A group of male students, faculty and staff of African and Latino descent known as the “Mays Men” has emerged at Bates College. Founded in fall 2007 by Czerny Brasuell, director of the college’s Multicultural Center, the group seeks to emulate the values that defined the phrase “Morehouse Men” during the Morehouse College presidency (1940-67) of Benjamin Elijah Mays ’20, a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr.

The Mays Men also hope to strengthen the historic connection between Bates and Morehouse colleges.

A historically black institution and the nation’s largest liberal arts college for men, Morehouse was King’s alma mater. Mays served as a lifelong adviser to King and eulogized him in 1968. The first African American chairman of the Atlanta School Board, Mays inspired generations of civil rights leaders with his words and actions. King called Mays “my spiritual mentor and my intellectual father.”

Recently, six student Mays Men accompanied by four Bates faculty and staff members traveled to Atlanta for the inauguration of Robert M. Franklin as Morehouse’s 10th president. In attendance were Leslie Hill, associate professor of politics and special assistant to President Elaine Tuttle Hansen; Visiting Assistant Professor of English Timothy Robinson; Associate Dean of Students James Reese; and Assistant Dean of Students Roland Davis ’92, whose father Willie J. Davis chairs the Morehouse Board of Trustees. Student participants were Anthony Begon ’08 of Peabody, Mass.; Victor Babatunde ’11 of Lagos, Nigeria; Uriel Gonzalez ’11 of Von Ormy, Texas; Claudeny Obas ’09 of New York City; Anthony Phillips ’10 of Philadelphia; and Theodore Sutherland ’11 of Accra, Ghana.

On his lapel, each one of the Mays Men wore a specially designed nameplate engraved with his name, class year and the words “Bates College, Mays Men.”

Introduced as Bates “Mays Men” to President Franklin during his inauguration festivities, the group received an enthusiastic reaction from the new Morehouse leader, said Reese. “Oh, Bates! Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!” Franklin told the group. “We are so glad you are here with us. This is very special for all of us.”

Franklin, a 1975 Morehouse graduate, personifies Morehouse’s reverence for its history in general and Mays in particular. “We were impressed with Morehouse’s regard for revered alumni and staff who had contributed significantly to their institution,” said Sutherland ’11. “It was apparent that Dr. Mays, also called the ‘schoolmaster of the revolution,’ was a major source of inspiration not just for the school, but for all who sought equality of the human race.”

Reese says that Mays communicated his love and appreciation for Bates to generations of Morehouse men during their famed Chapel sittings, a legacy that has endured throughout the decades, says Reese. Because of “his honored and celebrated life, Bates is still a strong and cherished name in the life, lore and lexicon of Morehouse.”

In founding the Mays Men, Brasuell sought to create a presence at Bates that “can be a living testimony to him,” she says. “The group is a visual reminder of Dr. Mays’ work and legacy.”

The men at Bates can learn and live Mays’ values in a concrete way, says Brasuell. To help increase the number of men of African and Latino descent at Bates, she says, the Mays Men can also serve as recruiters for these two groups. “It’s all about retention and recruitment.”

The Mays Men have had an active academic year. In addition to sharing various meals and sending members to the Morehouse inauguration, in fall 2007 several members traveled to Swarthmore College to attend the seventh annual conference for African American and Latino men from the Consortium on High Achievement and Success, an organization of 34 liberal arts colleges dedicated to promoting achievement among students of color.

The group seeks to find additional ways to honor the life and achievements of Mays at Bates by focusing on uses of and permanent displays in the Benjamin Mays Center, a part of the college’s residential village at Garcelon Field.

Lisa D’Oyen ’09 of Kingston, Jamaica, holds her cell phone in one hand and two open boxes of Hostess crème-filled chocolate Zingers in the other. Standing beside a table lined with edible snacks, lubricated latex condoms, and fact cards, D’Oyen and her psychology classmates share information about HIV/AIDS with students heading to lunch. Their sound system broadcasts hip-hop as a Yale Divinity School recruiter also vies for student attention.

A standard Chase Hall tableau? Not today. This afternoon, D’Oyen stakes her ground in Manley College Center at Spelman College, the historically black women’s college in Atlanta, where she and Mbali Ndlovu ’09 of New York City are spending their fall semester.

Like any of the College’s myriad off-campus study offerings, the exchange program with Spelman and Morehouse hopes to offer students the right experience at the right time: during their junior year, when students are equipped to dig deeper into their intellectual, social, and emotional beings.

For D’Oyen and Ndlovu, part of this exploration will involve race, for at Spelman and Morehouse, the nation’s two premier historically black liberal arts colleges, “the courses and the context provide a sensitivity and awareness of racial issues that,” says Steve Sawyer, associate dean of students and director of off-campus study, “is impossible to replicate on a small New England campus — no matter how well-intentioned.”

As part of her pschology course, Lisa D'Oyen works at an HIV/AIDS awareness table in the college center at Spelman College, the historically black women's college in Atlanta.

Another overlay is gender. Spelman wants visiting students like D’Oyen and Ndlovu to leave the school with a “stronger sense of self, their place in the world, and what the Spelman ‘sisterhood’ is all about,” says Desiree Pedescleaux, who oversees the institution’s domestic exchange programs.

Ndlovu and D’Oyen get a sense of the sisterhood from “The Black Female Body in American Culture,” taught by M. Bahati Kuumba, associate professor of women’s studies. The professor discusses how the human body is a system of symbols and how, for black women in U.S. society, those symbols can suggest a political struggle.

After class, Ndlovu schedules an appointment with Kuumba, wanting the professor’s advice on designing a senior thesis topic for her Bates majors in African American and women and gender studies.

Everything about the professor resonates with the two young women. “She’s an activist. She’s been out there. And she’s very political,” D’Oyen says. True, there are political activists on the Bates faculty, she says, but at Spelman “we get the black perspective from black women. We can relate.”

“Like for the first time in my college career,” Ndlovu adds.

Mbali Ndlovu ’09 (left) and Lisa D’Oyen ’09, who studied at Spelman College during the fall, join Claudeny Obas ’09, who spent spring 2006 at Morehouse College, at the Benjamin E. Mays National Memorial at Morehouse. Mays graduated from Bates in 1920.

One morning in late November, D’Oyen and Ndlovu head across the street to Morehouse to see the Benjamin E. Mays National Memorial. At once, the Bates-Morehouse connection seems real, though they’d heard about it all fall. “Every Morehouse student we met automatically knew what Bates was,” Ndlovu says.

At the monument, the women are joined by Claudeny Obas ’09 of New York City, who’s in Atlanta visiting friends he made while studying at Morehouse in 2006.

Obas, a veteran of mostly white educational environments, talks about what might be gained from a semester at Morehouse, particularly by someone who’s never been in a minority situation — racial, sexual, religious, or other: “an understanding of what it’s like not having as many people to lean on in terms of your peers, and [having to go] outside of your comfort zone just to make the effort to reach people.”

For Obas, the semester started with getting “stuck in a room for two hours learning the school song,” he recalls, but the indoctrination into the Morehouse mystique paid off. “I felt I was joining a long line of prestige,” he says. Obas’ semester at Morehouse deepened his understanding that he “works better” in the multifaceted social milieu of an urban college. “I’ve always known that, but it was made much more apparent to me at Morehouse.”

He experienced one particularly glittering facet of Morehouse life thanks to Roland Davis ’92, assistant dean of students at Bates.

Davis, whose father chairs the Morehouse board of trustees, said that if Obas was accepted for the Morehouse semester, Davis would get him tickets to the school’s “Candle in the Dark” gala.

And that February, Obas was indeed in black tie at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta to see famed photographer Gordon Parks and Tony Award–winner Geoffrey Holder receive their Candle awards for excellence in their fields. Obas also witnessed several Morehouse alums receive their “Bennie” awards for service, achievement, and trailblazing.

“It was quite the experience,” Obas says.

Photographs and text by Phyllis Graber Jensen

Bates, Morehouse, Spelman

The connection between Bates and the nation’s two premier historically black liberal arts colleges — Morehouse for men and Spelman for women — dates to 1940, the year Benjamin E. Mays ’20 began his 27-year Morehouse presidency.

The Bates-Morehouse-Spelman Exchange Program was established in 1994, the centennial year of Mays’ birth. While the program has had modest student participation from both sides over the years, Bates is now focusing greater attention on this and similar initiatives, part of redoubled efforts to incorporate a wider spectrum of people, perspectives, and disciplines within the Bates experience.

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http://www.bates.edu/news/2008/02/01/mays-and-king/#respondFri, 01 Feb 2008 19:21:39 +0000http://batesviews.net/?p=1968Lawrence Carter, presenter of the keynote address for the College’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance on Jan. 21, talked partly about the influence that Benjamin E. Mays ’20 had on the great civil rights leader. “You can see Mays all through King,” said Carter, professor of religion at Morehouse College. For example, just as King often issued challenges to his audiences, so did Mays. “He was famous for his challenges,” said Carter, curator and dean of Morehouse’s Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. [More…]
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